Deuteronomy 33:12

Summary

The verse records a saying concerning the tribe of Benjamin: he is called the "beloved" of Yehovah, dwelling in security, with protection extending "all the day" and resting "between the shoulders." The sentence is built from two matching verbal clauses ( yishkon / shaken ) framing a central participial clause describing ongoing protection.

Key words

• yediD ("beloved of", H3039A) — masculine singular adjective in construct form, binding directly to the following divine name to mean "the-beloved-of Yehovah," making Benjamin's identity depend on the relation to Yehovah rather than standing as an independent title.
• yishKon ("he dwells", H7931) — qal imperfect, expressing an ongoing or future state of dwelling; opens the outer frame of the verse.
• chofeF ("[who] covers", H2653) — qal participle, masculine singular; participles in Hebrew denote continuous or characteristic action, here portraying an unceasing covering/shielding rather than a single completed act. The grammar does not attach an explicit subject noun to this participle.
• ketefaV ("shoulders of-his", H3802) — masculine plural noun in construct with a pronominal suffix, meaning "his shoulders"; plural form for a body part used in a spatial idiom ("between the shoulders").
• shaKhen ("he dwells", H7931) — qal perfect, same root as yishkon but perfect aspect, closing the verse with a completed/settled sense of dwelling, forming an inclusio with the opening imperfect verb.

What the text says

The verse opens with le-Vinyamin amar ("concerning Benjamin he said"), introducing a saying about the tribe. The core statement is yedid Yehovah yishkon labetach alav — "the beloved of Yehovah dwells in security upon/because of him." The pronominal suffix on alav ("upon him", H5921A + H9033) is grammatically ambiguous: the referent (Yehovah or Benjamin) is not distinguished by the suffix form itself, since Hebrew third-person masculine singular suffixes do not mark this distinction contextually beyond word order.

The following clause, chofef alav kol ha-yom ("covering over him all the day"), uses a bare participle with no stated grammatical subject in the Hebrew text; the identity of "the one covering" must be inferred from the preceding clause. The verse closes with u-vein ketefav shaken ("and between his shoulders he dwells"), where the qal perfect shaken mirrors the opening qal imperfect yishkon, producing a verbal frame around the whole verse — beginning and ending with the same root for "dwell," one in incomplete (imperfect) and one in completed (perfect) aspect.

Differences between versions

The LXX supplies an explicit subject, ho theos ("God"), for the covering action, where the Hebrew participle chofef has no stated subject. The Vulgate adds the image quasi in thalamo ("as if in a chamber"), an interpretive expansion not present in the Hebrew wording, which simply states "all the day" (kol ha-yom, H3605 + H3117G) without any chamber imagery.